The Drifters (101 page)

We parted with the understanding that he would make a careful estimate of the best price he could offer me when I became his representative in Europe: ‘It will be a price, I assure you, on which we can both become very rich. Because there’s a lot of money to be made in this business.’

In some ways the most interesting section of the Djemaá was the area adjacent to the souks, for not only was the covered market visible but also one found here the focus of various interesting activities. There was the bicycle stand, filled with hundreds of vehicles throughout the day, a lounging place at night. There was the Sportif, the dark and grimy café in which one could buy a plate of greasy stew for fifteen cents and meet people from various parts of the world. The Sportif sold doughnuts, caked with chewy sugar, and poorer travelers sometimes lived on them for days. Nearby stood the stall of a woman who made hashish cookies, and beyond her was the kiosk which sold fruit during the day and served as a flophouse for Jemail and other gamins during the night.

But the lodestone which drew all foreigners to this end of the Djemaá was an extraordinary restaurant perched on the second floor of a building much damaged by the violent earthquake of February 1969. Huge wooden poles positioned throughout the ground floor supported the upper, which contained the eating areas, so that waiters—a seedy lot of men in filthy clothes—had to dodge in and out among the poles as they carried the food upstairs on a set of stairs so tenuous that visitors climbing aloft to dine sometimes grew queasy even before the food was placed before them.

At each meal this typically Moroccan dining hall served only one main dish, usually some kind of heavy stew, with large chunks of crusty bread and a sickly sweet orange drink, but if one could grab a table on the balcony and then squeeze himself into the narrow space allowed each customer, he found before him a panorama of unforgettable grandeur: the snow-covered Atlas, the solitary minaret of the Koutoubia, the vast expanse of wall, and
the broad unfolding of the Djemaá with its constantly changing cast of characters. The restaurant was called the Terrace and from it one saw the tragi-comedy of Marrakech: an ancient city founded by Berbers who had wandered down from the mountains, a city which still retained the confusion and character of a frontier hideout.

I was sitting on the balcony of the Terrace one lunch-time with Gretchen and Britta when we spotted Jemail coming across the Djemaá. He had a young man in tow, and we were watching idly to see what the little devil was up to, when Britta suddenly leaped to her feet and started waving frantically. Soon Gretchen did the same.

‘It’s Yigal!’ Britta cried, and now the oncoming figure began waving to us, and I saw that it was our friend, in an expensive suit and looking the perfect tourist from Detroit.

The girls started to run down the rickety stairs to greet him, but waiters were ascending at that moment, so Jemail shouted, ‘I’ll bring him up!’ and soon the two were standing before us, with Jemail grinning benignly as Yigal kissed the two girls.

‘Yigal!’ Gretchen cried in delight, but he stopped her, whispering, ‘In Morocco I’m Bruce … my American passport,’ and now it was Gretchen who whispered, ‘Shhhh! Don’t let the boy hear. He’d turn you in to the police for a penny.’ And Jemail moved closer to try to catch whatever new thing was developing.

Yigal took Britta’s hands and said, ‘You’re even prettier than I remembered,’ and Gretchen, eager to forestall embarrassments, interrupted: ‘Did they tell you in Torremolinos?’

‘I wasn’t there,’ Yigal said. ‘Tell me what?’

‘Britta and Mr. Holt are married … well, sort of.’

‘Oh …’ If Yigal was hurt by this news, he masked his feelings and said, ‘Then you’ll be going to wherever he’s going,’ and she nodded, with Gretchen explaining, ‘This time it’s Ceylon.’

‘Great place,’ he said. Then, in a new voice, pitched higher, he asked, ‘So where is the gang living?’ and the girls explained that they were in the Bordeaux, where he must stay, and Britta was in the expensive hotel, along with Harvey and Mr. Fairbanks. But what they really wanted to know was why he had come to Marrakech and what he was going to do about his citizenship.

‘America is difficult to take … if you take it seriously,’ he said.

‘What does that mean?’ Gretchen asked.

‘I think you know,’ he said.

After lunch we led him through the alleys to the Bordeaux, and found Joe and Cato in Inger’s, listening to records.

‘Hey, you look great!’ Yigal cried when he saw the new-shaven Joe. He turned the tall fellow around, admired him, then said to Gretchen, ‘You ought to fall in love with this one.’ In the embarrassed silence that followed, Yigal deduced that this was what had already taken place, so he said, ‘A lot must have happened when I wasn’t looking.’

They sat him on one of the beds and offered him a smoke, but he refused. They then interrogated him about his life in Detroit, and he said, ‘I liked Case Institute in some ways, but it seemed so immature after the schools in Israel. The courses were quite simple and the professors didn’t seem dedicated to their work, but what really put me off was the kind of thing the kids were excited about—the draft, for example—things that we had settled in Israel six years ago. In the end I found it quite unbearable.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Gretchen said. ‘But after a spell with us … you’ll go back to the States, won’t you?’

‘I think so. I just got fed up with college … and in a way, Detroit. But that is one helluva country.’

‘Do you think you’ll go back to college?’ Britta asked.

‘I suppose so. But not to Case. I might like Harvard. Something to bite into.’

‘Then you’ve decided to become an American?’ Gretchen asked approvingly.

‘I think so.’ He paused, then added, ‘The country is so big, no matter what you want to do, you can find the space to do it in. It makes Israel look very small. I suppose I was so preoccupied with Israel’s small problems that I couldn’t appreciate America’s larger ones.’

‘Your grandfather will be happy,’ Britta said.

‘Right now he’s probably tearing his hair out. Thinks I’ve gone back to Israel. He’d never be able to understand that I simply had to talk with you kids. That I’d throw over my admission to Case to compare notes with you in Marrakech.’

‘But he’ll be relieved you’ve given up on Israel,’ Gretchen said.

‘Very. Out of fairness to the old geezer, I’m going to write him tonight.’

Up to this point Cato had been silent, but now he looked soberly at Yigal and said, ‘I’d go slow on what I write the old man’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It might be better if you elected Israel.’

‘How so?’

‘Because from what I learned in Moçambique—and here—well, things aren’t going to be too easy for the Jew in America.’

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘The blacks will have to drive the Jews out of American life. There has got to be open warfare.’

‘What are you saying?’ Yigal’s small, tight face had hardened, and he leaned forward so as to confront the Negro directly.

‘I’m saying what I learned. That the American blacks are going to reject Christianity.’

‘The Jews did that two thousand years ago.’

‘But the blacks are converting to Islam. And that’ll make them part of a great confederation—Arabs in Egypt against the Jews of Israel … blacks in the United States against the Jews of America.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Yigal asked.

‘You saw the beginnings in Detroit,’ Cato said quietly. ‘It’ll happen across America.’

Yigal moved closer and said, ‘For a black man to talk like that to a Jew is insanity. You better go home and sort yours ideas out, because if you can’t make an alliance with me—and with Jews like me—you are finished, Brother Cato. You are dead.’

Cato did not draw back, but at the same time he did not speak so forcefully as to make his next statement a challenge. He said simply, ‘The Jew has got to be removed. For one clear reason. He holds all the positions the blacks are entitled to.’

Yigal was about to respond when he saw, standing in the doorway, a figure he scarcely recognized. It was Monica, risen from a heroin hangover, shaking and painfully thin. He rose from the bed, hurried to her and took
her hands in his. ‘Monica, what’s happened? You look so yellow.’

‘No sun,’ she said, kissing him on the cheek.

‘I didn’t say sallow. I said yellow.’

‘Who the hell are you? Dr. Schweitzer?’ She pushed him away and asked if anyone had a joint going. Rolf offered her a smoke, and she inhaled deeply, the soporific quality of the marijuana quieting her nerves. After the fifth deep drag she came back to Yigal and asked, ‘How was the land of the Big PX?’

At periodic intervals the American residents of Hotel Bordeaux found it necessary to leave the old section of Marrakech and venture into the new. At such times they left the security of the ancient red walls and wandered like invading Visigoths into the spacious business district on whose borders stood the elegant homes erected in the days of French occupation. This part of Marrakech resembled any substantial suburban community of Paris or Los Angeles, and the beatniks looked ridiculously out of place. They sensed this, for they moved uneasily, aware that the police were watching, but the sorties, unpleasant though they might be, were unavoidable.

On this particular Thursday my presence in the expedition was required, so it was agreed that all concerned would assemble at the Terrace at eleven in the morning, and I was there having a cup of coffee when I saw the motley gang entering the Djemaá in single file, Big Loomis in the lead, a pachyderm with beads, jangling bracelets, flapping yak boots and an embroidered woman’s bag slung over his left shoulder. He was followed by three scrawny girls I had only vaguely seen before; they came from various parts of the United States, and so far as their parents knew, were studying French at the university in Besançon. Behind them came two boys from New England with heads of hair as big as watermelons, followed by Monica and Gretchen in miniskirts, with Yigal and Cato bringing up the rear, the latter dressed in a weird half-African, half-University of Pennsylvania costume.

As they came slowly across the Djemaá, Big Loomis had to bear the insults of Jemail and his militia, but the others were greeted pleasantly. Merchants familiar with
the group nodded approvingly as the entourage passed and the crowds at the bicycle stand parted to let them by. Finally Big Loomis stood below me, raised his massive face to the balcony where I sat, and cried, ‘Alert, up there! Today we resume communication with the little old lady in Dubuque.’

I joined them and we walked up the broad Avenue Mohammad V, past the Koutoubia, as beautiful in sunlight as it had been at midnight, and into the business section. We stopped at a well-constructed building with bars over the windows and a modestly placed bronze sign:
American Banking Corporation, New York.
Pushing apart the heavy doors, Big Loomis stalked into the foyer and headed with homing instinct to the cage marked
Incoming Drafts Overseas.
Rapping smartly on the counter, he demanded, ‘Any good news from Petroleum, Texas?’ The clerk shuffled a stack of papers and said, ‘It’s arrived, Mr. Cargill,’ and he brought to the window a bank draft for two hundred dollars sent some days ago by the big man’s mother in Petroleum. With a flourish, Loomis signed the necessary papers and took his money in Moroccan bills, kissing each one as he stuffed it into his embroidered shoulder bag.

After he concluded his business the three scrawny girls moved to the window, asking in turn whether their bank drafts had arrived, and two were lucky. As they accepted their money they told the third girl they’d stake her till her parents forwarded her check. The two New England boys were disappointed, but the lucky girls assured them, too, that there would be money and not to worry.

Now I was needed. I accompanied Cato and Yigal to the window and told the clerk, whom I knew from the varied transactions I had conducted with him during previous trips, ‘This young man is Cato Jackson, from Philadelphia, and I think he may have a cable here from a man named John Wister. What specific bank it will be coming through, I wouldn’t know, but I can vouch for him.’ The clerk shuffled his stack and found a draft from the Fidelity Bank in Philadelphia.

I then introduced Yigal as ‘Bruce Clifton, Grosse Pointe, Michigan. It was named by French explorers.’ The clerk smiled and bowed. ‘The draft will probably be from some Detroit bank,’ I said.

‘Detroit’s also French, isn’t it?’ the clerk asked, and when I nodded, he smiled and produced Yigal’s draft.
Finally it was Monica’s turn, and I introduced her as the daughter of the distinguished British diplomat Sir Charles Braham, at which the clerk bowed very low before handing her a draft for sixty pounds from a Canadian bank—an arrangement whereby the stiff British regulations against exportation of currency could be evaded. There was some hitch in the paper work, so we lounged in the lobby and idly watched as another group of seven Americans arrived to pick up their allowances from home.

They were the usual lot—long hair, ragged clothes, unwashed—and they came from all parts of the United States. The four girls must have been beautiful in the days when they bathed, and one was still special She was a honey-blonde, well proportioned, vivacious and quite talkative. She was remarkable in that her general conversation consisted almost exclusively of ‘Like wow!’ and ‘You know.’ To pass the time she started talking with Gretchen: ‘You’re with Big Loomis. Like wow! You know, he’s well, you know. Like wow, we heard of Big Loomis in Tangier and they said, you know, he’s well, you know, like wow!’ At this point Gretchen didn’t know anything, but the newcomer went on to explain: ‘You know, you can trust him, you know, on all sorts of things, you know, like wow!’

‘Where you from?’ Gretchen asked.

‘Claire from Sacramento. My father’s with the space center in Houston, like wow. You know men on the moon, like wow. I hope he sent me a check. Wow, I got exactly one American dollar, like wow, who’s gonna eat on one American dollar, you know, like wow?’